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Yeah, this seems like a really bad idea for publishers to do. Ryanbarwick/1557767005318553600Permalink On twitter.com
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I think it's bullshit that any entity would consider *all* incentivized traffic invalid. That's incredibly dumb... what are the advertisers doing that's different from publishers buying traffic?Permalink On twitter.com
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But operating at this scale in mobile games in particular is not great because a significant percent of traffic will be bots and whatever the publisher is paying (not much I'm sure) will still be too much.Permalink On twitter.com
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As for the buyers acting like they are oh so surprised... Give me a freaking break. Publishers buying traffic has long been a known thing. digiday.com/media/buying-facebook-traffic/amp/Permalink On twitter.com
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Like, the thing is that other systems exist on page and catch the actual fraudulent users, or at least a good percent of them. Advertisers should get off their high horse here.Permalink On twitter.com
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If buyers don't like the quality of uhhhh *checks notes* the ad tech ecosystem, or feel you can't trust your antifraud that's a you problem. Legit publishers get fraud traffic no matter what, so does everywhere on the internet. Good ones put protections in place & talk about thatPermalink On twitter.com
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I've worked in the past for multiple sites that purchased traffic. Hell, I've promoted a personal tweet or two. The biggest problem I've seen at past employers is when they don't know what they're doing and make bad choices. Usually because the inventory is cheap...Permalink On twitter.com
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The most common problem is supposedly legit operators at seemingly legit prices sending fraud traffic. Let me tell you, it's hard to deal with... not b/c it increases impressions, but because almost every system automatically disappears it making it hard to track and get refundsPermalink On twitter.com
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The lowest spend I ever got legit traffic w/ (many years ago now), outside of big social platforms, was $0.14 & we positively confirmed internally and w/ supplier 80% of that traffic was fraud. Not a single percent point of fraud triggered an impression, all correctly marked IVTPermalink On twitter.com
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That publisher had previously gone to its ad ops lead & told them to 'buy the cheapest traffic you can get, here's a monthly budget' & that person didn't do verification or checking. Turned out they were buying traffic for half a cent from a popunder browser bar. None of it validPermalink On twitter.com
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No one understood what was going on. They were buying traffic and impressions and pageviews were not going up and none of their existing tools was seeing the traffic, even GA on 'show bots' mode. But they had a budget so they kept putting it into sketch buying.Permalink On twitter.com
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My point here is that the advertisers have nothing to worry about. It's publishers who are wasting money foolishly most of the time. Incentived Traffic at least usually means the user has interacted with the page in some way to generate an impression.Permalink On twitter.com
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Let's be clear "publishers leveraging purchased traffic is a deceptive practice" is an incorrect statement. If they knowingly buy fraudulent traffic, that's a different issue, but just buying traffic to fulfill a campaign? That's just how the web works...Permalink On twitter.com
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When traffic on the web is monitized, you'll eventually need to pay money to get traffic.Permalink On twitter.com
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The irony is these exact same advertisers have, for over a decade now, turned around, used data leaked from legit publishers, & purchased ads directly from these same sources--& worse, undercutting pubs, and using fraudulent traffic to set unrealistic precision targeting goals.On twitter.com
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Then worse, many of these companies execute programmatic buying campaigns on sketchy sites that have no protection and often run their own bot farms, but don't have the interest or capability to audit them. Then hold legit publishers to a different standard.Permalink On twitter.com
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Also... Lol, the MRC's overpriced ratings mean literally nothing. They run accreditation for fraudulent sites and tech all the time. I wish more publishers refused to pay for their shakedown.Permalink On twitter.com
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The ad tech ecosystem is full of arbitrage. If you're surprised by that as a buyer it must be your first day on the job. Maybe this specific case is a bad approach, but if you want highly specific traffic with highly specific characteristics that's a big incentive to buy it.Permalink On twitter.com
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My greatest hope is that privacy brings an end to precision targeting and all the incentives that make this happen, undercutting retargeting fraud sites and buying arbitrage traffic anywhere, decrease significantly.Permalink On twitter.com
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Buyers have created the economics of this system, they don't get to pretend to be upset about what they've wrought now.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anyway, speaking of targeting I once worked with a co where we purchased traffic that was highly targeted from... StumbleUpon (remember them!?!). It was a $1.25 avg per click, but every user we got was highly engaged, hit multiple pages, sometimes left legit comments. It was nicePermalink On twitter.com
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Publishers considering arbitrage mostly make the mistake of thinking they're buying traffic, but the far better approach is to pay to connect with readers. You'll end up with people who come back that you don't have to pay for.Permalink On twitter.com
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But it's difficult to put an upfront higher investment and too many legit publishers have no idea what they're doing in this space. That's bad for them, but the impact to advertisers is almost certainly negligible.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anyway... When it comes to traffic, like everything else, you get what you pay for. I'm glad I had the experiance, but more glad to not have had anything personally to do with the world of arbitrage for many years now or at this employer.Permalink On twitter.com
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Oh, and if you're a buyer and you want good quality precisely targeted traffic, you get what you pay for too. Stop racing to the bottom on pricing...Permalink On twitter.com
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and realize that you should prob ask publishers to build in arbitrage at good prices because those users have a better chance of being engaged than whatever awful shit you're buying on the open programmatic market.Permalink On twitter.com
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It never ceases to amaze me how the source of the money in the market refuses to understand that the choices they make with that money shapes how the ecosystem works.Permalink On twitter.com
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